Pruden on Politics

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Asking a U.S. senator for his views on morality is the ultimate fool's errand. As the innkeeper of "Fawlty Towers," the British sitcom, was fond of saying in moments of neighborly frustration, "you might as well ask the cat."

Everybody wants to be a snowflake, now including even newspapermen. There's nothing inherently wrong with something called "World Press Freedom Day," but journalism has always been a contact sport. That's what made freedom of the press one of the best ideas the Founding Fathers ever came up with.

These are not happy days for the liberals, or progressives, or Democrats, or whatever they're calling themselves this week as, one by one, they stink up the familiar labels we've all used over the years.

South Carolina and California don't seem to have a lot in common. South Carolina is small, prosperous, and cohesive, and California is large, all but bankrupt, and talking about splintering into an undetermined number of pieces.

"Just getting there, as Cunard once boasted of transatlantic crossings by ship, "is half the fun." The Atlantic is still there, but ocean liners are not, and almost the only way to cross the ocean sea now is by air. That's no fun at all. Dining aboard an ocean liner has been replaced by dining aloft, and you're lucky to get a pretzel or a stale cracker.

Trying to spark a new romance, or even arrange a weekend tryst, is not always easy. It's impossible with the help of spectators eager to throw things, not orange blossoms but sticks and stones with sharp edges. But that's how Washington tries to conduct diplomacy, circa 2018.

Donald Trump called James Comey a "slimeball," which is not a very presidential way to talk. But just this time we might have to forgive the president. James Comey really is a slimeball. Just about everybody says so.

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has a difficult job. He has to spend a lot of time with congressmen, after all, and the typical congressman, Republican or Democrat, is composed of two pounds of ambition, three pounds of compressed gas and eight ounces of brains, stuffed into a one-pound bag. Who can deny him a hermitage in the Wisconsin wilds.

If John Bolton frightens the nation's enemies half as much as he frightens Chicken Little and all the Democrats at home, all the strife, evil and deceit in the world will soon be history. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un will lie down with the lion and not have to worry about being the midnight snack.

Thousands of the readers of The Washington Post suffered strokes, heart attacks and an outbreak of social disease this week in the wake of its big front-page story that Robert Mueller, in hot pursuit of the president for lo! these many months, has informed Donald Trump's lawyers that the president is not, after all, "a criminal target."

George Orwell is dead and gone, and more than a half-century has passed since he wrote "1984," but he would recognize America today. He was an Englishman (real name Eric Blair) who understood that no state is immune to human mischief.

The grassroots keep sending messages to Hollywood, but usually nobody's home. Oblivious to real lives outside the California bubble, the masters of the fanciful, the absurd and the bizarre wouldn't read the message, anyway.

The mountain huffed and it puffed, and roared with promises of revelations that would shake the foundations of the republic. Or at least make the lights flicker. All it produced was a scrawny little mouse: Donald Trump is a vulgar womanizer, a pursuer of shady ladies with expensive lawyers and big boobs, and always on the make. Ho. Hum.

This won't be "the thrilla in Manila," or the "rumble in the jungle," but "two clowns in a septuagenarian smackdown" should do more for the sweet science of boxing than anything since the two Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fights on the eve of World War II.

Only a few days ago Andrew McCabe was nobody's idea of a hero, except to James Comey and maybe Robert Mueller. They think Mr. McCabe, tarnished or not, cashiered or not as the deputy director of the FBI, purveyor of fibs, stretchers and lies with and without varnish, might still be useful to their campaign to bring down Donald Trump.

California has no cannon guarding San Francisco Bay, and it's not likely that anybody at City Hall would know how to use one if there were, but Jeff Sessions, the U.S. attorney general, nevertheless has some wise words along with his lawsuit against California's sanctuary cities seeking to nullify federal immigration law.

The silly season arrives early. Considerably more than a dozen prospective Democratic candidates for president in 2020 are lining up to talk about how they would dispatch the Donald to the island of discarded presidents.